Companion to the blog post: http://johnpeltier.com/blog/2013/12/29/user-story-map/ It’s hard for a product owner to keep and communicate perspective when looking at a stacked list of features needed in a product. Backlogs are too granular and, frequently, just too long. A product’s user stories may be broken up numerous ways: by very narrow slivers of end-to-end functionality, by seams in the technical architecture, or by some other approach. It’s hard to look at the list and see what the end result is. Perspective is needed to see the big picture.